CAN RED JACKET SURVIVE? A Reality Television Family's Legal Dramas Threaten A Gun Company

Red Jacket Firearms grew from a boutique manufacturer to a national brand nearly overnight due to reality television, and may return to near obscurity for the same reasons.
Red Jacket Firearms grew from a boutique manufacturer to a national brand nearly overnight due to reality television, and may return to near obscurity for the same reasons. (Image via The Red Jacket web site).
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Like most of America, I’d never heard of Red Jacket Firearms before Discovery Channel’s reality television series, Son of Guns.

Sons of Guns revolved around the “family-owned” boutique gun business as they manufactured custom firearms for law enforcement, security companies, and collectors. I watched the series occasionally, which primarily revolved around Will Hayden, who was presented as the owner of the company, his daughter Stephanie, who was the office manager, and a select number of other employees who worked at Red Jacket Firearms including Kristafor Ford, the Red Jacket production manager who dated and later married Stephanie Hayden.

Episodes of the show typically started with a customer asking for a unique firearm, and then the episode followed the trials and drama as they attempted to build the firearm in question. The episodes ended with an over-the-top “test” of the created firearm that usually involved pyrotechnic explosions.

The show made the family at the center of the show relatively famous, and certainly boosted the visibility of the Red Jacket brand. The brand quickly became coveted as a result of the show, and customer orders poured in. Reportedly, the backlog of firearms of other products bearing the Red Jacket label grew to be very substantial.

Things seemed to be going well until the show was suddenly cancelled in August of this year after Will Hayden was arrested on charges that he molested his 12-year-old daughter.

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Will Hayden’s older daughter Stephanie Hayden-Ford and her husband Kristafor Ford then strongly hinted that Will Hayden had molested her as well, and then she made her allegations public when she appeared on Dr. Phil. At least one other relative also came forward to accuse Will Hayden of abuse, and he is currently in jail and unable to make bail, facing charges in two separate Louisiana parishes.

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Joe Meaux is the CEO of Red Jacket Firearms, and the man in the unenviable position of having to deal with the celebrity brought to the company by the reality television series Sons of Guns.
Joe Meaux is the CEO of Red Jacket Firearms, and the man in the unenviable position of having to deal with the celebrity brought to the company by the reality television series Sons of Guns.

While the child molestation charges killed Sons of Guns the television show, it appeared that Red Jacket’s real boss, Joe Meaux, stood a very good shot of salvaging the Red Jacket Firearms brand.

It quickly emerged that Will Hayden had never been the owner of Red Jacket Firearms, LLC, the company that appeared on the show, and that the company’s Federal Firearms License had actually been held by other employees at different times. Will Hayden played the part of the owner on television, but Joe Meaux was the chief operating officer (COO) and is currently the CEO.

Customers and the general public alike seemed willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt, especially when it was confirmed that the family members that remained on Red Jacket’s staff, Stephanie Hayden-Ford (and by the extension of her pain, Stephanie’s husband Kristafor Ford) were also victims.

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Shockwaves again hit the brand Friday when it emerged that Kristafor Ford and Stephanie Hayden-Ford were arrested on child abuse charges.

Kristafor Ford is accused of hitting Hayden-Ford’s child from a previous relationship with a belt hard enough to leave bruises. Stephanie Hayden-Ford was charged as an accessory because she was in the room and didn’t call the police on her husband.

Many people who grew up being disciplined with corporal punishment delivered via belts, wooden spoons, switches and paddles delivered by parents, grandparents, teachers, and school principals find the charges against Ford and Hayden-Ford to be highly suspect. Others seem to delight in the scandal, especially as it gives many of the show’s critics who hate firearms, firearms companies, and gun owners an excuse—however illogical or ill-contrived—to think that they are somehow “better” people because of their arrests.

Unfortunately, the arrests of Hayden-Ford and Ford are another blow to the brand of Red Jacket Firearms. Unlike Will Hayden, who was for all intents and purposes an actor on a television show who was relatively easy to discount, Hayden-Ford and Ford have real and active roles as company officers at Red Jacket Firearms.

It now seems that the same fickle reality television celebrity that made the Red Jacket brand so popular also threatens to destroy the brand with negative attention, and Joe Meaux and his staff—most of whom have never been on television—are in a tough spot that was not of their own making.

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Do they support Hayden-Ford and Ford through their case and take a wait-and-see attitude towards their employment, and link their employment to whether or not they are convicted? Do they fire them preemptively? Do they retain them, regardless of their guilt or innocence in a court of law?

For that matter, will Red Jacket’s actual customers even care about the various Hayden family criminal allegations? Do the charges against Will Hayden, Hayden-Ford, and Ford even matter to those people seriously considering the purchase of Red Jacket Firearms products?

Sadly and ultimately, public opinion about the company derived from reality television celebrity may end up being what makes or breaks Red Jacket Firearms, not the actual value and functionality of their actual products.

That harsh truth may be entirely unfair, but that is the blessing and curse of choosing to take part in reality television for this or any other company.

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